Little Brayden: Abagail's Origin
by qxzky- The Sheaman chapter
Summary: This is the origin. Warnings: Dark Themes Ahead. M for a reason.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This is a request. A bit of unfamiliar territory for me, so I would love any feedback, any feedback at all. Please review whatever you think.**

In Coal Run, Ohio, Michael Wyatt and his wife Sarah move to Coal Run with their daughter Abagail and their son Brayden. Their house is just off the path of the tour of haunted houses, but other than that, there aren't many neighbors for a few miles. There isn't much going on in the small town A few sparse bushes of wiry briars populate the landscape, but other than that, there is only sand for miles. Michael had reached a low point in their hometown of New Orleans, and moved there to start a new life for himself. Stone cold sober for the first time in months, Michael took a job at a nearby power plant, renowned in the area as a dangerous source of mercury because of the coal, near the combustion chamber. As he began to experience shortness of breath and episodes of extreme tremors, Michael thought these symptoms were just withdrawals from his decision to avoid alcohol, and continued at his job for many months.

One night, as he arrived home, his wife had prepared salmon for the second night in a row.

"She's trying to kill me with all this fish" his frantic thoughts running over how many conspiracies she could have planned with his children there, who she was forced to homeschool because they were the only children in the area. What if she was spreading her hatred for him to his children? As his poisoned brain tried to come up with a plan, he moved the fork around his plate as he listened to his children's idle chatter at the dinner table. Abagail was laughing merrily at a funny face Brayden was making, but in Michael's mind, they were laughing at him.

At how stupid he was.

For trusting them when they were planning to kill him!

Convinced that his wife and daughter were conspiring to kill him, William excused himself from the table, and after calmly resting his plate in the microwave, he grabbed the car keys and drove into the city.

As he drove back home, he glanced over into the passenger's seat with a confident grin. Eight shots should be plenty to quell this little uprising. They would stop laughing soon enough.

He waited until his wife and children had fallen asleep, wiping the fingerprints of the bullets and congratulating himself that he had enough patience to wait until they would never see him coming.

BANG!

His ears rang a little.

He shook his head.

How dare she bleed all over his sheets? Didn't she know he would have to clean that later? And the brain matter added to the blood. The nerve of her. Now he would have to throw out the mattress. He pushed her over so that she was on her back. The fleeting thought of shooting her again passed through his fevered mind, but he knew there was still one more person to handle.

Abagail.

Michael stalked down the hallway, bumping into the walls louder than he thought he was.

The loud noise of the gunshot had awoken Abagail suddenly, and she had climbed into bed next to Brayden, snuggled under his arm for safety as they had assumed it was just some noise from the house. Michael opened the door and walked in, the light behind him from the hallway preventing their sleepy eyes from fully seeing the revolver. Seeing that it was their father, Abagail closed her eyes, laying on her sleeping brother's chest with the confidence that she was safe. Safety would be the last thing she felt.

BANG!

The ringing was back.

And the bleeding and the brain matter, just like her mother, Michael shook his head. Brayden awoke suddenly, feeling a sticky, chunky substance spread out behind his shoulder. His face sprayed with a fine sheen of blood spatter from the initial entrance of the bullet that rested in his shoulder blade, the pain of the secondhand bullet wound was stymied by his shock that his sister was now motionless and cooling as the sticky substance washed over him. His father moved from his position in front of the hallway's light, and Brayden saw the blood, his sister, and the gun in one instant. The pain hit him first, and then the panic.

Brayden scrambled out of the bed, running out the front door just as a car was passing by.

What were the odds that the Sherriff of Coal run would be out at this hour? A screaming, blood-covered child waved down his patrol car with his good arm, and the sheriff stopped to open the door, confused as the child grabbed his shirt and shrieked something unintelligible. Seconds later, an angry man came storming out of the house shooting blindly, taking out his rear tires as the sheriff screeched away, squawking into his radio for backup as the child grabbed around him blindly, crying. After he had reached the station, he realized that the child was injured. Calling on his fellow officers, they processed all the evidence on the child quickly and sped him to the hospital. In all the confusion, the shrieking silenced, and the child passed out from the pain and blood loss. Flashes of the muzzle of the revolver haunted Brayden as he flinched repeatedly without an apparent cause.

Meanwhile, as the patrol car sped away, Michael chased after it for a few seconds, only to come to a sudden, breathless halt. Snarling angrily at the tail lights, he vowed, he would get his son back. He would rescue Brayden from the evil clutches of his wife and daughter, if it was the last thing he did.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thank all of you guys for the reviews and follows! OMG! Thank you so much!**

 **Please keep letting me know what you think!**

Months passed, as Brayden was placed in child protective services, and his father grew more and more sporadic. In his almost catatonic state, foster families that heard the gentrified story were very sympathetic of how his father had attacked his mother (because of course the foster system didn't mention the murder). The first family, determined to fix him, sent him to psychologists and medicated him until he didn't know his own name. Lost in a fog, Brayden was almost glad to be delivered from the memories of his father and his sister. Too young to know any better, Brayden struggled to understand what insanity meant, and why it allowed his father to do the things he did. The medication may have made things difficult in his life, but at least it rescued him from having to think about that.

After placing his thumb on the eye of the stove, Brayden was moved to a second foster home, one that took his medication as a preexisting condition, and let him continue it, accommodating him as if he were suffering from a mental illness. Brayden started to forget why he wanted to be medicated in the first place. His father was driven insane as the asylum he was held in refused to treat him or try to find out what was wrong. His insanity led him to suicide, the only indication to the public was two lines of an obituary.

Brayden's confusion led to several instances of him acting out, and he was moved to a third foster family of Christian scientists, who refused to accept his medications. Wondering why he was on them in the first place, the decision not to take them was a welcome change to Brayden. In this family, Brayden started to go through adolescence, he wondered what happened to his father. He started to look into it, going against their rules not to do so.

In his fourth foster home, Brayden continued his search for his parents, also finding along the way that he had an affinity for wrestling with opponents in the same way that he wrestled with his thoughts. Finding that he was skilled at this, and finally, as he reached adulthood, set out on his own. To find his family. To find some answers.

Joining an independent wrestling circuit, Brayden started to look for his family. He wondered what happened to them. He wondered why they never looked for him.

As months passed, Brayden came closer and closer to finding answers, at the same time improving his skills in FCW.

A year and several redacted files later, Brayden still hadn't gotten through to any of the officers on the case, so he decided to go to the precinct in the area that had the redacted files. He used his holiday break to find answers, saying goodbye to his friends at his new flagship, NXT. The entire flight there, he wondered what could have been so terrible that the files were sealed.

Brayden reached the precinct, ready to talk to the officer that had sealed his files. He walked in with a confident expression, believing that nothing he discovered would be worse than his imagination, Brayden was now sure it had actually been worse. After coming face to face with the crime scene images, Brayden barely made it outside before vomiting and heaving slightly. His head spun as he wondered what caused his father to go so insane. Staggering around as he tried to make sense of the events, of the sister he didn't remember having, of the murder in his own home, Brayden happened into a liquor store. The only store that didn't check ID for customers that paid with cash.

Brayden spent many months curled up in the bottom of a bottle, trying to forget what he had discovered about his own bloodline. In his sober moments, that were few and far between, he doubted sometimes if he was even fit to live. There had to be some hope, some escape from this.

Brayden found the hope he sought in an obscure Cajun cult leader, who claimed immortality, only to die in his sleep the night after his claims. Brayden decided that he would not only accept this cult, but that he would become it.

Once he decided to form his family, Brayden decided to return to NXT under his new persona. Now everything had changed. He took his work a lot more seriously. He accepted broken people even as he crushed them. His self-hatred combined with self-love as he was determined to escape a fate that no one understood. Surrounding himself with the Family that followed him, Brayden changed his name and his future with a single name: Bray Wyatt.


End file.
